Good customer service

A new white paper published by Serco examines the benefits of transforming contact centre culture and the potential this has to impact the bottom line. It explores the importance of employee engagement to the contact centre environment and examines both the theory, as well as examples of how it can work in practice.

Working with the employee engagement and communications division of Loudhouse Consultancy, the paper takes a hard look at the impact of increasingly sophisticated technology on the contact centre environment to boost personal productivity levels. It demonstrates how technology innovation and service improvement at an employee level are not always related; in fact, without strategic investment to align cultural change with 'systems' innovation, these two forces can be in conflict. The inescapable importance of call volume handling and 'resolution' at a quantitative level obscures manifold qualities valued by employees and customers alike.

"Customer service has to be an attitude, and not a process", says Loudhouse Performance Director, Jamil Qureshi. "A new methodology called 'Think, Feel, Act focuses on the benefits and positive contributions others derive from their interaction with contact centre staff. In turn, the success and satisfaction of the staff is defined by what they do rather than what their job title, description or function is. We must define ourselves by what the customer buys, not by what we sell."

In the contact centre environment, there needs to be a closer emotional connection between a customer and the value point they experience when dealing with an advisor, salesperson or customer service representative. Adopting the tenets of 'Think, Feel, Act', encouraging contact centre staff to think differently about who they are and what they can be, will result in them doing things differently - and better.

"There is a compelling opportunity for businesses and brands to cement loyalty and enhance the customer experience," says Jan Lewis, Serco's Transformation and Transition Programme Manager. "Serco has started taking contact centre staff on a 'journey' towards an employee engagement model that is fit for the industry of the future."